New board will be county's first all-woman panel

LONGMONT — Come January, Boulder's Elise Jones will be joining Longmont's Deb Gardner and Lafayette's Cindy Domenico on Boulder County's Board of County Commissioners, based on partial results for Districts 1 and 2.

The three women, all Democrats, will give Boulder County its first all-female Board of County Commissioners.

Jones, the Colorado Environmental Coalition's executive director since 1999, and the former Rocky Mountain director of the League of Conservation Voters, appeared to have handily bested Libertarian Shane Hampton, a University of Colorado student, and fellow Democrat Richard Lopez, an attorney who lives in the Left Hand Canyon area, in the three-way general election contest for the District 1 seat on the county board.

Deb Gardner (Courtesy photo)

“I'm humbled and honored,” Jones said, to have been chosen by the voters of Boulder County, and “thrilled to be able to serve with Cindy and Deb.”

Jones and Hampton were on Boulder County voters' printed ballots, while Lopez was a write-in candidate. Republicans didn't field a candidate in this year's District 1 race.

The Boulder County Clerk and Recorder's Offices reported that of the 98,026 votes counted in the District 1 race by 11 p.m. Tuesday, Jones got 79 percent; Hampton, 21 percent; and Lopez, less than 1 percent.

Gardner, meanwhile, appeared to have won her own three-way contest for the county board's District 2 seat, a post to which she was appointed by a Democratic vacancy committee in January.

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Gardner, an accountant who represented House District 11 in the Colorado Legislature in 2011 until her appointment, appeared to have won a full four-year term in the District 1 county board seat by defeating Longmont Republican Maureen Denig, the owner of a travel agency, and Longmont Libertarian Audrey Bray, a veterinary technician.

The Boulder County clerk's 11 p.m. tally showed that of the 106,606 votes counted in the District 2 contest, Gardner had received 66 percent; Denig, 28 percent; and Bray, 5 percent.

Domenico, the current chairwoman of the Board of County Commissioners was not up for re-election this year after being appointed to her District 3 seat in 2007 and winning elections to the seat in 2008 and 2010.

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